Cognitive processing Top-down vs bottom-up processing

While reading activities
While-reading activities are activities that help students focus on text features and comprehension. In addition to guiding students towards a better understanding of the text, these activities aim at:

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  Connecting students prior knowledge with the content of the reading,
  
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  Helping them gain new knowledge,
  
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  Training them to deal with similar text in the future.
  

The following are a few examples of while reading activities
Skimming
Skimming the text to check predictions is a while-reading activity that is an extension of some pre-reading activities. Skimming can be defined as reading a text quickly to get a general idea of the passage. Students do not have to read everything. Skimming involves among other things:

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  Reading the title, the headings, and the subheadings.
  
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  Reading the introduction or the first paragraph.
  
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  Reading the topic sentence of each paragraph.
  
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  Looking at pictures, charts, or graphs.
  
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  Paying attention to italicized or boldface words or phrases.
  
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  Reading the concluding paragraph.
  

Scanning
Scanning refers to reading to find specific information such as a name, a date, or a number. This is a technique used when one is interested in finding specific information quickly.

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  As a teacher, you may want to ask your students to scan a text to find answers to (a) specific question(s).
  
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  With these questions in mind, your students read the text to attempt to find answers to only these questions.
  
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  They may ignore irrelevant information.
  
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  Students may use headings and any other clues that will help them identify which part of the text might contain the needed information. In other words, they will have to read selectively and skip through irrelevant sections of the text.